Check RENDER TO RIB
Click on the file button and save a file. Four our purposes we will just call it FILE (FILE.RIB) but you only need to type FILE (it will add the RIB extension)

Check KEEP SHADOWS and COLLECT AND LOCALIZE
(this will write all your renderman shaders to a local file folder. The file folder will be called file_collected (File (underscore) collected)

hit RENDER A new window will pop up but it will remain black. A dialog box will also pop up and show progress. ONce that dialog box dissapears, the RIB file will be ready.

OPEN Your DOS Prompt

You will need go to the folder where your files are located.

I save MY files in My Library\documents\daz 3d\rib\

So, as my dos prompt opens up in My Library, I must type "cd documents\daz 3d\rib\file_collected\

(NOTE: you have actually created TWO rib files, each with the same file name. Ignore the one that is NOT in file_collected unless you are keeping your DAZ Studio scene open, going to the file_collected folder will allow you to close that scene)

TO RENDER:

type the following command: renderdl -id file.rib

IF you do not wish to watch your render in progress, you can type: renderdl file.rib

BUT adding the "-id" will open the 3Delight i-display which will display your render in progress

when the render is done, save it from i-display to where ever...

You may now delete the file_collected folder and all its content

Your render should be exactly what you would see in the DAZ studio native render engine with the possible exception of the background colour. That part I have yet to figure out... so if anyone knows how to make that stick... I don't think I can yet have a background image work either, but I have not tried yet. I still have to rely on DAZ Studio for that part.

I run a quad core intel i5 and have seen no real difference in render speed even though the 3Delight free stand alone is limited to two cores. You may, of course, experience different results.

it frees up DAZ Studio to do other things. Since it's restricted to two cores, if you're like me and have a quad core, it actually leaves half the CPU free so that you can work without having your computer pretty much locked up. As I said, speed wise, I have not seen any huge difference.

it frees up DAZ Studio to do other things. Since it's restricted to two cores, if you're like me and have a quad core, it actually leaves half the CPU free so that you can work without having your computer pretty much locked up. As I said, speed wise, I have not seen any huge difference.

the best use of this that I have read is to get the Linux version and convert an older system to linux to run this on, as you can do this all command line in linux without the resource hog of a GUI in the way. from what I have been lead to understand its ALOT faster when used in this manner.

question:
as someone kindly mentioned in a thread (about bryce, but gone off-topic) here, where i mentioned my very poor low netbook specs made rendering in good quality impossible (too low memory being the main prob) - i DL the 3delight standalone and tried a file which i had rendered in quality 3 in daz studio, but setting quality to 4 - garanteed to crash in daz studio.

got the RIB file, opened it (without prompt, worked directly.. is it because i use windows 7?) - and after what, not even 10%, it crashed. i retried, ditto.

so, i guess with or without standalone - as long as i'm sitting on this netbook, i can forget any serious work.. :-S

question:
as someone kindly mentioned in a thread (about bryce, but gone off-topic) here, where i mentioned my very poor low netbook specs made rendering in good quality impossible (too low memory being the main prob) - i DL the 3delight standalone and tried a file which i had rendered in quality 3 in daz studio, but setting quality to 4 - garanteed to crash in daz studio.

got the RIB file, opened it (without prompt, worked directly.. is it because i use windows 7?) - and after what, not even 10%, it crashed. i retried, ditto.

so, i guess with or without standalone - as long as i'm sitting on this netbook, i can forget any serious work.. :-S

Signal 11 error sounds like a bad geometry somewhere in your render. There may be a specific model(s) that are causing the render to crash, sometimes with 3Delight you can pinpoint it by watching where it is and what it was trying to render when it went kaboom. If its the case of the model then the rendering engine is not the blame. Often you can take the offening model and resave iit or export as an OBJ or something else, remove it, re import the model and get through it.

secondly, what are the specs of that computer? OS version (32/64?), RAM and what else is running on it. Make and Model. Often you buy a laptop from a distributor and they suck up a gig or RAM with bells and whistles. Sure lightscribe is fun if you are still burning disks but you don't need it running all the time using up RAM when your trying to render.

Signal 11 error sounds like a bad geometry somewhere in your render. There may be a specific model(s) that are causing the render to crash, sometimes with 3Delight you can pinpoint it by watching where it is and what it was trying to render when it went kaboom. If its the case of the model then the rendering engine is not the blame. Often you can take the offening model and resave iit or export as an OBJ or something else, remove it, re import the model and get through it.

that something in the scene itself might be faulty is a thought that crossed my mind too.. so after i posted this, i searched for a scene i made with 1 genesis, 1 michael 4, 3 planes, 1 camera & 1 light. nothing else - and retried RIB & render - it crashed too...
so unless my genesis default is bugged ~

secondly, what are the specs of that computer? OS version (32/64?), RAM and what else is running on it. Make and Model. Often you buy a laptop from a distributor and they suck up a gig or RAM with bells and whistles. Sure lightscribe is fun if you are still burning disks but you don't need it running all the time using up RAM when your trying to render.

as i mentioned i think in the other thread maybe, it's already a miracle daz actually runs on this system. it's a netbook, not even a laptop.
no real graphic card, only a lame integrated chipset. os win 7 (starter, not even win 7 full..), 32bit.
sure some apps might run in the background, but i even switched off wlan while rendering, no other prog running.
--> ASUS 1001PX // Intel Atom CPU N450 1.66GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.7GHz // 1024MB RAM // Graphics Media Accelerator 3150... <--<br />
this is not a decent pc, i should be ashamed to spam your threads with this sorry excuse for a computer, and probably not bother until i sit on a decent system - which i can't afford yet ~

There is a 3Delight forum... also a wiki... I'll see what I can find there.

i had a peek in the 3del forum - crashes on much better systems too. but i didn't find useful specific info about specs or RAM.. and most things i just don't understand. i'm a beginner and this sounds like chinese to me..

i tried to search/read the 3delight user manual too, but honestly, i don't get anything at all, it almost gives me seizures..

funny is, i tried rendering another scene. just heavy enough (1 genesis, 3 panels) to challenge daz render, and see if/when it crashes.
- quality 3 went ok in seconds, as predictable

- quality 4, means 3delight in daz, worked too (pic wasn't so big)
- 3delight standalone crashed with the RIB made from the same file. and i tried about 5x to screencap the error msg in the dos window, too fast :(

question:
as someone kindly mentioned in a thread (about bryce, but gone off-topic) here, where i mentioned my very poor low netbook specs made rendering in good quality impossible (too low memory being the main prob) - i DL the 3delight standalone and tried a file which i had rendered in quality 3 in daz studio, but setting quality to 4 - garanteed to crash in daz studio.

got the RIB file, opened it (without prompt, worked directly.. is it because i use windows 7?) - and after what, not even 10%, it crashed. i retried, ditto.

so, i guess with or without standalone - as long as i'm sitting on this netbook, i can forget any serious work.. :-S

turn off progressive rendering, it consumes a lot of RAM, and try it again.

turn off progressive rendering, it consumes a lot of RAM, and try it again.

BINGO!
i first tried with the big scene from my 1st post, quality 4 - without progressive rendering but still inside daz, and it did crash, albeit much later, it was like at 99% (and i found out the info when daz crashes can be read by normal non-support people too *blush* - there's not enough memory available).
then i tried without progressive rendering and as a RIB in 3delight standalone - and it worked!

so it seems my 3delight standalone had a problem with progressive rendering somehow..
just hope it won't change tomorrow again due to some weird unknown changing computer mood ~
i don't even remember if progressive rendering is a default, or if i was noob enough to switch it on, and then thought "weird - the previous 3D prog i had rendered line by line.."

hence even if i can't render huge projects (haven't even tried 1 animation yet), at least i can produce decent simple pics!
i'm so happy - thank you zilvergrafix and everyone who helped with tips :-)

turn off progressive rendering, it consumes a lot of RAM, and try it again.

BINGO!
i first tried with the big scene from my 1st post, quality 4 - without progressive rendering but still inside daz, and it did crash, albeit much later, it was like at 99% (and i found out the info when daz crashes can be read by normal non-support people too *blush* - there's not enough memory available).
then i tried without progressive rendering and as a RIB in 3delight standalone - and it worked!

so it seems my 3delight standalone had a problem with progressive rendering somehow..
just hope it won't change tomorrow again due to some weird unknown changing computer mood ~
i don't even remember if progressive rendering is a default, or if i was noob enough to switch it on, and then thought "weird - the previous 3D prog i had rendered line by line.."

hence even if i can't render huge projects (haven't even tried 1 animation yet), at least i can produce decent simple pics!
i'm so happy - thank you zilvergrafix and everyone who helped with tips :-)

Try to lower your bucket size, and render with point cloud, it's less memory hungry.

Thanks for this thread wancow. I did my first test render in stand alone 3Delight lastnight. Would have been a right pain in the... neck without your tutorial.

It will be a while before the benefits of the updated engine filter down to the average DS user, but for the adventurous a lot of new possibilities have opened up.

The upped limit to Quadcore is a good thing. In fact from this point I'd almost rather advise to render outside DS if the RIB export is correct. I remember that DS backdrop didn't get exported. Don't know if that is still the case. I know there were little few things to be aware of when exporting to RIB but can't remember them right now.

I'm in the process of testing the 11's feature but that take quite some time

Right now I'm getting some very strange results. Exported scene with uberenvironment set to bounce, and all I'm getting is bright red with a little noise, and it's really, really slow. I'll put this down to the settings i'm using. I'll try something else. Should we be running tdlmaker and shader compilers?

Edit: rendering fine now. I was trying to render the wrong file. Still have no idea why it was rendering so slow though.

Well, here it is my first real render with standalone. Took an hour and a half to render (maybe more - forgot to time), but that's mostly down to going for a full GI affect with UberEnvironment and all the samples needed to get a clean image. Floor and ceiling were light grey colours (as is Genesis). Oh, actually the BIGGEST killer was the 6 levels of raytrace used to get all that lovely bounced light. I'm also only using 1 thread per core due to heating issues too, so total of 4 threads. Could probably have knocked the trace bounces back to 4, but I think it's time to start looking at photon mapping.

Just tried this. Not sure it was any faster, but there is a neat feature to change a few exposure setting on the final render after the render is done (luminosity and mid-tones). That is pretty cool! Nice way to tweak the final lighting if it came out a little too dark or light.

Actually...I re-rendered same image using both, and DS was faster, but DS maxed out all 8 cores, whereas standalone used only half of my processing power. (5:32 versus 7:01 minutes)

Just tried this. Not sure it was any faster, but there is a neat feature to change a few exposure setting on the final render after the render is done (luminosity and mid-tones). That is pretty cool! Nice way to tweak the final lighting if it came out a little too dark or light.

Actually...I re-rendered same image using both, and DS was faster, but DS maxed out all 8 cores, whereas standalone used only half of my processing power. (5:32 versus 7:01 minutes)

4 cores is all you get with the stand alone, it was 2 cores for years, 3Delight just upped it recently. Daz3d pays for an internalized license which allows you to use all cores as long as you render in Studio.http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php?page=3DSP_pricing
some users have reported over the years that the Mac and Unix versions appear to be faster on identical hardware than the Windows version. If you have a 4 core system the standalone will be faster because it gets rid of the Daz Studio overhead, some other users have reported turning off hyper threading will also speed up the stand alone and turn you 8 cores back into 4 (on a 4 core multi-thread CPU) but that's another can of worms.

I'm having a problem with my old Toshiba Laptop, when rendering in DAZ Studio 4.6. I set up a simple portrait of G2F, with my own self done lighting, and my own Bryce made backdrop. This machine is a satellite A 505 Toshiba with Windows 7 Home Premium. It is 64 bit, 4GB RAM, i3 CORE Dual Core processor, and I am not sure about my graphics card. When rendering the image I mentioned it overheats and shuts down my computer to protect the circuitry. Toshiba is good about that.

As my machine has just a Dual Core processor, would the Standalone 3Delight Render engine still work? I am new to the idea of rendering outside of DAZ Studio, as I have always rendered within the app. I also have Bryce 7.1 Pro, but it runs only as a 32 bit app, and the renders are done in a different way.

I do have a suggestion about the backdrop problem. Create a Primitive plane and have its upper side face the camera. Import your backdrop image onto the surface of that plane. If your plane has only one polygon, it will not use much memory except for the image that is on it. The purpose of doing this, is so that you will have a backdrop object rather than just the image. This also gets around the aspect ratio stretch problem, and if you have reflective surfaces in your scene, they will reflect whatever image you have on your backdrop plane. To let light pass though the plane, you can turn of shadow casting for the plane in the Parameters panel. I place several of these around my scene to get spectacular effects.

I'm having a problem with my old Toshiba Laptop, when rendering in DAZ Studio 4.6. I set up a simple portrait of G2F, with my own self done lighting, and my own Bryce made backdrop. This machine is a satellite A 505 Toshiba with Windows 7 Home Premium. It is 64 bit, 4GB RAM, i3 CORE Dual Core processor, and I am not sure about my graphics card. When rendering the image I mentioned it overheats and shuts down my computer to protect the circuitry. Toshiba is good about that.

As my machine has just a Dual Core processor, would the Standalone 3Delight Render engine still work? I am new to the idea of rendering outside of DAZ Studio, as I have always rendered within the app. I also have Bryce 7.1 Pro, but it runs only as a 32 bit app, and the renders are done in a different way.

I do have a suggestion about the backdrop problem. Create a Primitive plane and have its upper side face the camera. Import your backdrop image onto the surface of that plane. If your plane has only one polygon, it will not use much memory except for the image that is on it. The purpose of doing this, is so that you will have a backdrop object rather than just the image. This also gets around the aspect ratio stretch problem, and if you have reflective surfaces in your scene, they will reflect whatever image you have on your backdrop plane. To let light pass though the plane, you can turn of shadow casting for the plane in the Parameters panel. I place several of these around my scene to get spectacular effects.

3Delight standalone bypasses Daz Studio, It saves RAM but its not going to cut down on the heat for the most part.

If your computer is shutting down when it renders it could be a ventilation problem.
Do you have a lot of non-powered USB devices connected to this laptop, meaning they don't plug into the wall and they grab power from the computer?
Do you have a space heater in the room or is the room very warm?
Do you have the computer's air vents being blocked from getting air in AND out by books, clothes, cats?
Do you have pets and/or pet hair?
Do you have your laptops hardware firmware drivers up to date from Toshiba's website?

if you answered yes to any of these questions this might be the actual reason your shutting down during a render.

I'm having a problem with my old Toshiba Laptop, when rendering in DAZ Studio 4.6. I set up a simple portrait of G2F, with my own self done lighting, and my own Bryce made backdrop. This machine is a satellite A 505 Toshiba with Windows 7 Home Premium. It is 64 bit, 4GB RAM, i3 CORE Dual Core processor, and I am not sure about my graphics card. When rendering the image I mentioned it overheats and shuts down my computer to protect the circuitry. Toshiba is good about that.

As my machine has just a Dual Core processor, would the Standalone 3Delight Render engine still work? I am new to the idea of rendering outside of DAZ Studio, as I have always rendered within the app. I also have Bryce 7.1 Pro, but it runs only as a 32 bit app, and the renders are done in a different way.

I do have a suggestion about the backdrop problem. Create a Primitive plane and have its upper side face the camera. Import your backdrop image onto the surface of that plane. If your plane has only one polygon, it will not use much memory except for the image that is on it. The purpose of doing this, is so that you will have a backdrop object rather than just the image. This also gets around the aspect ratio stretch problem, and if you have reflective surfaces in your scene, they will reflect whatever image you have on your backdrop plane. To let light pass though the plane, you can turn of shadow casting for the plane in the Parameters panel. I place several of these around my scene to get spectacular effects.

3Delight standalone bypasses Daz Studio, It saves RAM but its not going to cut down on the heat for the most part.

If your computer is shutting down when it renders it could be a ventilation problem.
Do you have a lot of non-powered USB devices connected to this laptop, meaning they don't plug into the wall and they grab power from the computer?
Do you have a space heater in the room or is the room very warm?
Do you have the computer's air vents being blocked from getting air in AND out by books, clothes, cats?
Do you have pets and/or pet hair?
Do you have your laptops hardware firmware drivers up to date from Toshiba's website?

if you answered yes to any of these questions this might be the actual reason your shutting down during a render.

Answer to question 1: I have an external keyboard, external mouse, a cooling pad, and a WiFi booster device, all pulling power from the laptop. My built-in keyboard is fried and needs replacing. It is disconnected at this time. The mouse works far better than the touch-pad on the laptop, so I disabled it in favor of the external. The cooling pad should be moving more air though the machine but some clogs might have accumulated since the cleaning I did two weeks ago. The WiFi Booster helps with the connection to the internet as I live where WiFi is provided by the landlord, and the signal would be a bit out of range without it.
Question 2: Space heater is sometimes used but I keep it a good distance from my machine. and the computer gets hot even when there is cool air.
Question 3: All air vents are kept unobstructed.
Question 4: I have 2 cats and they are why I perform a regular cleaning of the ventilation system. I remove the access panels and use a soft dry artist's fan brush and a bit of canned air to do as thorough a cleaning as can be done once a month. I rarely find any accumulation beyond a very tiny amount of dust.
Question 5:I have not checked into having the hardware firmware drivers updated. I did not know about this possibility.

Those are my answers, and I certainly will check into your suggestions, especially concerning those updates. I also have plans to find a good used computer tower, and to perform maintenance and upgrades on my laptop. I do not need anything other than the tower to have all I need for a good desktop computer, as I have a 26" flat screen TV (Toshiba) that will work nicely as a monitor, A keyboard, and a Mouse. I also have two external hard drives, and several usb flash drives. Once i have that up and running, I will give my laptop a gradual overhaul until everything is fixed and all upgrades are completed.
I have been searching around for a used tower that has Windows 7, a quad core i5 or i7 processor, 8 or more GB RAM, and a recent video card. It should also be WiFi capable. For those of you asking me why not Windows 8 or 8.1, I point you to the postings all over the internet about how many older programs will not run on the new operating systems. I'll stick with Windows 7 until Microsoft gets the message about that.